adjective
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resembling a spike
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having a spike or spikes
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informal ill-tempered
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characterized by violent or aggressive methods
spiky protestors
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of spiky
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Maybe the only way to justify a magnetic attraction to wanting my bags, shoes and belts to be studded, spiky, pierced and heavy is by connecting the dots.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
He stars as Lonnie Hawkins, a washed-up golfer with spiky blond hair and a bad attitude.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026
The researchers compare the shape to the spiky burrs that cling stubbornly to shoes and clothing outdoors.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 15, 2026
While there were spiky moments between Topuria and Gaethje, there was little said between France's Ciryl Gane and Brazil's Alex Pereira, who will fight for the interim heavyweight title in the co-main event.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
The fence was higher than her head and topped with spiky wire.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
So much of his spikier music deserves attention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2025
Act 2, “Visitor From Hollywood,” is a spikier, shorter segue into satire.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 29, 2022
One of the novel’s spikier and more resonant points is that entertainment is its own drug, numbing us against discomfort.
From New York Times ● Jul. 13, 2020
Her self-titled debut, due in the spring, mingles the spikier and softer sides of her catalogue.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 28, 2018
Desdemona’s hair was long and silky, but I’d gotten Jimmy Zizmo’s spikier variety.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
On set or onstage, she will throw herself into the scrappiest, spikiest, ugliest facets of any part, without ego or undue seriousness.
From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2021
Shirley, director Josephine Decker’s new film about a few months in the life of the writer Shirley Jackson, aims to resemble a Shirley Jackson story of the very spikiest variety.
From Slate ● Jun. 2, 2020
But with “Jessica Jones,” which returns March 8 for a second season, she is able to let the spikiest elements of her imagination run amok.
From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2018
Elegantly observed and hysterically funny, it is Rich's spikiest work to date, sidestepping his usual romantic softness in favour of addressing tensions between Brooklyn's hipster excesses and Herschel's desperate poverty.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 16, 2013
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
